THE ROOM BELOW
I ran into the sitting-room, to discover Nayland Smith craning out of
the now widely opened window. The blind had been drawn up, I did not
know by whom; and, leaning out beside my friend, I was in time to
perceive some bright object moving down the gray stone wall. Almost
instantly it disappeared from sight in the yellow banks below.
Smith leapt around in a whirl of excitement.
"Come in, Petrie!" he cried, seizing my arm. "You remain here,
Weymouth; don't leave these rooms whatever happens!"
We ran out into the corridor. For my own part I had not the vaguest
idea what we were about. My mind was not yet fully recovered from the
frightful shock which it had sustained; and the strange words of the
dying man--"the golden pomegranates"--had increased my mental
confusion. Smith apparently had not heard them, for he remained grimly
silent, as side by side we raced down the marble stairs to the
corridor immediately below our own.
Although, amid the hideous turmoil to which I had awakened, I had
noted nothing of the hour, evidently the night was far advanced. Not a
soul was to be seen from end to end of the vast corridor in which we
stood ... until on the right-hand side and about half-way along, a
door opened and a woman came out hurriedly, carrying a small hand-bag.
She wore a veil, so that her features were but vaguely distinguished,
but her every movement was agitated; and this agitation perceptibly
increased when, turning, she perceived the two of us bearing down
upon her.
Nayland Smith, who had been audibly counting the doors along the
corridor as we passed them, seized the woman's arm without ceremony,
and pulled her into the apartment she had been on the point of
quitting, closing the door behind us as we entered.
"Smith!" I began, "for Heaven's sake what are you about?"
"You shall see, Petrie!" he snapped.
He released the woman's arm, and pointing to an arm-chair near by--
"Be seated," he said sternly.
Speechless with amazement, I stood, with my back to the door, watching
this singular scene. Our captive, who wore a smart walking costume and
whose appearance was indicative of elegance and culture, so far had
uttered no word of protest, no cry.
Now, whilst Smith stood rigidly pointing to the chair, she seated
herself with something very like composure and placed the leather bag
upon the floor beside her. The room in which I found myself was one of
a suite almost identical with our own, but from what I had gathered in
a hasty glance around, it bore no signs of recent tenancy. The window
was widely opened, and upon the floor lay a strange-looking contrivance
apparently made of aluminum. A large grip, open, stood beside it, and
from this some portions of a black coat and other garments protruded.
"Now, madame," said Nayland Smith, "will you be good enough to raise
your veil?"
Silently, unprotestingly, the woman obeyed him, raising her gloved
hands and lifting the veil from her face.
The features revealed were handsome in a hard fashion, but heavily
made-up. Our captive was younger than I had hitherto supposed; a
blonde; her hair artificially reduced to the so-called Titian tint.
But, despite her youth, her eyes, with the blackened lashes, were full
of a world weariness. Now she smiled cynically.
"Are you satisfied," she said, speaking unemotionally, "or," holding
up her wrists, "would you like to handcuff me?"
Nayland Smith, glancing from the open grip and the appliance beside it
to the face of the speaker, began clicking his teeth together, whereby
I knew him to be perplexed. Then he stared across at me.
"You appear bemused, Petrie," he said, with a certain irritation. "Is
this what mystifies you?"
Stooping, he picked up the metal contrivance, and almost savagely
jerked open the top section. It was a telescopic ladder, and more
ingeniously designed than anything of the kind I had seen before.
There was a sort of clamp attached to the base, and two sharply pointed
hooks at the top.
"For reaching windows on an upper floor," snapped my friend, dropping
the thing with a clatter upon the carpet. "An American device which
forms part of the equipment of the modern hotel thief!"
He seemed to be disappointed--fiercely disappointed; and I found his
attitude inexplicable. He turned to the woman--who sat regarding him
with that fixed cynical smile.
"Who are you?" he demanded; "and what business have you with the Si-Fan?"
The woman's eyes opened more widely, and the smile disappeared from
her face.
"The Si-Fan!" she repeated slowly. "I don't know what you mean,
Inspector."
"I am not an Inspector," snapped Smith, "and you know it well enough.
You have one chance--your last. To whom were you to deliver the box?
when and where?"
But the blue eyes remained upraised to the grim tanned face with a
look of wonder in them, which, if assumed, marked the woman a
consummate actress.
"Who are you?" she asked in a low voice, "and what are you talking
about?"
Inactive, I stood by the door watching my friend, and his face was a
fruitful study in perplexity. He seemed upon the point of an angry
outburst, then, staring intently into the questioning eyes upraised
to his, he checked the words he would have uttered and began to click
his teeth together again.
"You are some servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" he said.
The girl frowned with a bewilderment which I could have sworn was not
assumed. Then--
"You said I had one chance a moment ago," she replied. "But if you
referred to my answering any of your questions, it is no chance at
all. We have gone under, and I know it. I am not complaining; it's
all in the game. There's a clear enough case against us, and I am
sorry"--suddenly, unexpectedly, her eyes became filled with tears,
which coursed down her cheeks, leaving little wakes of blackness from
the make-up upon her lashes. Her lips trembled, and her voice shook.
"I am sorry I let him do it. He'd never done anything--not anything
big like this--before, and he never would have done if he had not
met me...."
The look of perplexity upon Smith's face was increasing with every
word that the girl uttered.
"You don't seem to know me," she continued, her emotion growing
momentarily greater, "and I don't know you; but they will know me at
Bow Street. I urged him to do it, when he told me about the box to-day
at lunch. He said that if it contained half as much as the Kûren
treasure-chest, we could sail for America and be on the straight all
the rest of our lives...."
And now something which had hitherto been puzzling me became suddenly
evident. I had not removed the wig worn by the dead man, but I knew
that he had fair hair, and when in his last moments he had opened his
eyes, there had been in the contorted face something faintly familiar.
"Smith!" I cried excitedly, "it is Lewison, Meyerstein's clerk! Don't
you understand? don't you understand?"
Smith brought his teeth together with a snap and stared me hard in
the face.
"I do, Petrie. I have been following a false scent. I do!"
The girl in the chair was now sobbing convulsively.
"He was tempted by the possibility of the box containing treasure," I
ran on, "and his acquaintance with this--lady--who is evidently no
stranger to felonious operations, led him to make the attempt with her
assistance. But"--I found myself confronted by a new problem--"what
caused his death?"
"His ... _death_!"
As a wild, hysterical shriek the words smote upon my ears. I turned,
to see the girl rise, tottering, from her seat. She began groping in
front of her, blindly, as though a darkness had descended.
"You did not say he was dead?" she whispered, "not dead!--not ..."
The words were lost in a wild peal of laughter. Clutching at her
throat she swayed and would have fallen had I not caught her in my
arms. As I laid her insensible upon the settee I met Smith's glance.
"I think I know that, too, Petrie," he said gravely.